[IGDA_indies] What should the Indie SIG do?

[Alan Au]

Okay, so quick feedback from the Seattle Sputnik meeting, it seems that there are number of indie developers in the area.  Interestingly, very few meeting attendees expressed direct interest in the formation of a separate indie SIG, but I attribute a large part of that to the inherently reserved nature of game developers.

Brian's and Jason's comments are good ones: there needs to be some compelling reason for indies to participate in the SIG, perhaps something more than they can already get by utilizing existing networks.  

My guess is that the main value of the local SIG will be access to local resources (e.g. publishers, printers, etc.) and peer developers.  Sputnik is wonderful, but it is also trying to represent a broad cross-section of the Seattle development community.  The intent of a local indie SIG is not to compete with existing groups, but instead to offer more *local* content while focusing on a smaller segment of the developer community.

As for specific actions, I'm admittedly sort of confused.  :(  I guess one starting point would be to start collecting a list of local resources, while also trying to build a member base to work from.  Perhaps the IGDA can help with the information-collection aspect of the SIG.

- Alan